The Time of Your Life

By William Saroyan

November, 2008

click here to view photos by Joel Benjamin

FPTC presented William Saroyan's sprawling 1939 masterpiece, timing our production to honor the 100th birthday of America's greatest playwright of Armenian heritage. The play is set in a waterfront bar in San Francisco, and we staged it in a bar, namely the legendary Lucky's Lounge, on Congress Street in the Fort Point Channel neighborhood.

A huge assortment of cops, longshoremen, drifters, hookers, snobs, innocents, lovers, pinball wizards, fortune-seekers and lost souls was brought to life by a brilliant cast of Boston-area actors, joined by a few of our own Fort Point Theatre Channel members.

Saroyan's play is rooted in the 1930s, but we felt it to be as fitting today as when he was writing for a nation mired in the Great Depression and facing a global upheaval.  Rejecting despair, Saroyan's warm-hearted play is one of hope for the future, even if that comes with the playwright's charge to viewers and readers: "In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."

The Time of Your Life earned Saroyan both the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, he refused the $1,000 Pulitzer, saying commerce should not judge the arts.

"THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE" CAST

Sylvie Agudelo (Mary L.)
Sasha Castroverde (A Killer)
Zash Chinhara (Wesley)
Amanda Collins (Kitty Duval)
Mary Driscoll (A Society Lady)
Greg Ferrisi (Sailor, Cop)
Silvia Graziano (Elsie)
Jordan Harrison (Nick)
Timothy Hoover (Dudley)
Chelsea Lembo (Willie)
Ari Lew (Krupp)
Rafael Marinho (Harry)
Robert D. Murphy (Joe)
Mary-Elizabeth Murray (Lorene, Killer's Sidekick)
William Neely (McCarthy)
Allen Phelps (Kit Carson)
Casey Preston (Tom)
Robin Smith (The Newsgirl)
Nick Thorkelson (A Society Gentleman)
Steve Triebes (Blick)
Rick Winterson (Arab)

"THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE" PRODUCTION STAFF

Sylvie Agudelo (Costume Designer)
Deirdre Benson (Stage Manager)
Jarrod Bray (Production Designer)
Mary Driscoll (Costume Associate)
Christie Lee Gibson (Sound Designer and Assistant Stage Manager)
Marc S. Miller (Director)
Alys Myers (Props Co-designer )
John Randell (Set Crew)
Nick Thorkelson (Graphic/Web Designer)
Daniel J. van Ackere (Technical Director )
Sandra Vieira (Props Co-designer)
Sarah E. Wall-Randell (Dramaturg)